Creepy...

Darrell said:

During the 'looking,' one of the most 'creepy' moments occurred when the thief was having a look at the crypt door. A small spider (a real one, apparently with an excellent sense of timing) dropped down from the ceiling and landed on the back of her hand, resulting in a scream that could probably have been heard in the next county.

Eventually, they took the key and the ring from my hand, and left the tomb, deciding that the staff was something better left untouched. As they left, the rogue decided to blow out the candle. As it was extinguished, I let out a low moan; and both of them literally RAN out the door. When the full group met again the next week, the cleric and rogue presented the group with the key and the story of an odd adventure.

A follow-up...

Last year, I ran into the rogue's player at the museum where I was working. We started talking about our D&D group, and she told me that the 'tomb crawl' had been her favorite gaming experience. Pretty decent effect for about forty-five minutes planning.

Regards,
Darrell King

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You sir are my hero. I have to try something like that

Mr. Draco said:

The best session I've ever run was for a d20 modern game that was somewhere in between the X-Files and Military Special Forces... Power is the last thing you want PCs to have when you're working on an atmosphere of powerlessness and dread in the face of the unknown.

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Very cool stuff, thanks for sharing.

this thread must not die!!!

neway. I think the creepiest thing I ever threw at my players was when a Necromancer was trying to create the perfect undead. For that he was stealing corpses from the local graveyard, and living people, in order to "fuse" them.

A few days later, after resqueing the daughters of the local bard from 2 flesh golems. They decided to infiltrate the necro's house. As soon as they got in, (ex-cleric/rogue, a favoured soul, the third member wasn't present, the worst ninja ever) they were chased, by the necro's summoned hellhound, into the hot-house. They found a map of the city with the city's guarding routes and schedules, as well as several targets. There were some notes about the creation of the undead, and a ressurecting potion. They escaped back to the inn when more hounds started showing up.

That night the two girls were kidnapped by a few hummonculus (spelling?), the players managed to follow them, and soon discovered that the local guard was cooperating with the necro (they found out that the BBEG, a dark paladin, had pushed the current captain up in the rankings, in exchange of letting the necro work as he wanted. They pursued a homunculus through the graveyard and into an empty grave that was a secret passage into the necro's mannor. Since they were pretty fast on getting through the labyrinth, they managed to recover the girls alive, if they had taken a little while longer, they would've fought a little cookie I baked for them.

Deep in the caverns of the PCs' home, a portal to another dimension was opened, and water started to fill in through the portal. Over time, skum started arriving through the portal to explore the area. They brought supplies with them, and started to colonize the cavern. The PCs fought the skum and killed them, but not before one of their number was exposed to aboleth venom. He was worried as his skin changed and began to dry out.

The quick-thinking PCs were able to find a barrel and kept him in the barrel with water, so that they could retreat to figure out what to do next. They grabbed as much of the skum's equipment and left.

So far, the PCs are worried, but still holding it together. They hated that they had to barrel one of their number, but at least they were alive and active.

Then they found the antidote. Among the procured equipment was a bottle, about the size and shape of a large wine bottle. However, the bottle was fleshy, somewhat hairy, and it wasn't stoppered--the neck was held shut with a sphincter. They thought this was odd, but not too worrisome. Then they figured out that by stroking the bottom of the bottle gently, the sphincter opened...

...and the players just howled in revulsion. "It's the PERV'S bottle!!!!" one of them cried out. It was then--not before, not after--that the PCs knew this portal had to be reclosed.

Thank you, David Cronenberg.

InVinoVeritas said:

Then they found the antidote. Among the procured equipment was a bottle, about the size and shape of a large wine bottle. However, the bottle was fleshy, somewhat hairy, and it wasn't stoppered--the neck was held shut with a sphincter. They thought this was odd, but not too worrisome. Then they figured out that by stroking the bottom of the bottle gently, the sphincter opened...

...and the players just howled in revulsion. "It's the PERV'S bottle!!!!" one of them cried out. It was then--not before, not after--that the PCs knew this portal had to be reclosed.

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Damn you - you almost made me spit a mouthful of water on my screen!

And yes, that story's just beautiful

Hell fire

So a friend of mine was mentioning that horror is all in presentation, in that spirt I have an idea for a very frightening necromancer for a lowish level campaign. The first part of the encounter would have the PC's meet one of the village folk with the curious disfigurement of having some viable part of his body being hairless shinney and looking a bit "melted". When asked he would tell the party that about six months back a few people had started disappearing from some of the outlying farms. That this hadn't caused a great stir but some of the locals went out to check the woods for bear spore. They hadn't found anything at the time but a few more people went missing. Now about a month ago one of the local kids had seen some strange lights in an old abandoned temple one evening so the town warder and four able bodied men with some mellisha training had gone to check it out later that same night. The five of use went down into the old ruin and you know what we say? Some kinda demon it looked like a man but the skin was all discolored and bumpy and the face... the face was like hell its self, a wide maw with huge fangs the skin was all wrinkly but the eyes were on fire. Now I don't mean to make excuses for what happened but the the eyes were like hollows full of green fire. But then it said something, no i dint hear what but it said something I could smell brimstone and there was a flash of this black flame... thats right I said black flame and it gave off a kinda sickly purple light i was in the back so it just caught my arm but I could feel it leaching out my very soul. The others fell and I just ran. I know I should of stayed and fought but I just couldn't I ran... god (insert diety here) help me I turned and ran.

So the next part of the encounter if there brave enough to go on is to go into the temple ruins. The ruins themselves consist of a coble stone floor with walls no longer any higher then a mans waist and whats left of stone arches sticking up into the air like a rib cage. The aria is covered with small greenish mushrooms (if it's at night the moon seems to leach all color from the place). As they enter into the ruins they find a door way a satire way leading down, there is fresh dirt on them that looks as if they have been used recently. As they descend down they see some kind of slime on the walls, the stair switches back on it's self leading them under the church it's self. They enter into a large chamber with a vaulted ceiling and a door leading out at the other end, in the middle of the room are four bodes, one of which is wearing chain mail in the middle of a circular scorch mark. All of the viable flesh has that same melted texture of the mans arm, they have no hair and their eyes look like they exploded, they are also covered in more of that slime. Then roll a die behind your DM screen, then ask if they want to examine the bodies. Next roll again and tell them that they hear something that sounds like a wet flopping noise. Then the bodies get up to their feet. Combat ensues use standard zombie stats. After the fight they will enter into the next room. In that room they will find a "demon" sitting on a backless chair in the middle of the room and three other doors leading out. The creature stands up, it's face looks like one of those Chinese demon masks with the tusk/fangs on upper and lower lips but it has a small high forehead and flames in the eyes and long back hair, it is dressed in a robe it's face is dark red but it's hands have a weird splotchy color. Feel free to give a better description but I want to be accurate for those DM's that use pictures as props. It stands up as the PC's enter the room. Hopefully the mage will launch a flight of magic missiles at it if so they simply get sucked out of reality as they near the thing, maybe a foot away from it's chest. The "demon" waves it's hands and with a smell of brimstone it throws a ball of green flame.

What is really going on is this is just a necromancer who can cast fire ball. He uses either a meta magic feat or a magic item to change the color of his spells to throw people off. The face is just a mask, and the fires in the eyes are eternal flames (again color changed), the long hair is horse hair, the small forehead is because he sees out of slits below the eyes which are just small bowled out sections of mask and the splotchy discoloration on the hands are the result of sundry alchemical spills (nothing serious but not what you would call attractive. As for the disfigurements caused by his fireball; the sort of flash heat produced by a FB does not have time to charr flesh, hair would be incinerated and the scalp might have some secondary burns but there would be little char. The slime is just mold I only describe it to add color and to make the PC's think it's important. The mage knew the PC's were coming because under some of the fresh dirt on the stairs was a mystic alarm that notified him and the fight with the zombies gave hem a chance to get suited up cast resist elements (fire) mage armor, and shield on himself. Of course this would be good as a low level bit of filler to introduce the effects of third level combat magic to the party and show them the slightly more gruesome side of your basic evocations.

Cartigan Mrryl said:

He failed his checks, so it looked like him. Paladin attacks, kills a young innocent woman... what do you think would happen? Ex-Paladin, anyone?

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Not if I was DMing. The paladin had no way of knowing that an inocent woman was in the firing line. Should every paladin take Quicken SLA so they can check for evil every rounf before thay attack?

Besides, if this thread has proved anything, it's that young women in D&D are never innocent!


glass.

Whoever resurrected this thread -- thank you! I had subscribed to it before, but the subscription was lost during the DB Crash. I had searched for it afterwards, with no luck.

I just thought I would mention that I found a cool place to get some ideas for creepy adventures. On the website www.horrorchannel.com they have a feature they started called daily scares - apparently a horror author (can't recall the name right now) is submitting one paragraph blurbs for horror story ideas. Some of them are really good and would work well in a modern setting - for dnd or D20 it might require some tweaking. Just go to horrorchannel.com and click on the daily scares banner. NOTE: You may have to join their forums but it's free.

Shadowdancer said:

Whoever resurrected this thread -- thank you! I had subscribed to it before, but the subscription was lost during the DB Crash. I had searched for it afterwards, with no luck.

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Your welcome. But I did it for my own selfish reasons. (And soon my plans for WORLD DOMINATION will fall into place!)

A minor bit of creepiness I used on the kids game this summer - in a dream one of the characters left the room she was staying in and wandered into the hall. There, on a chair, was a sleeping cat. When she went to pet the cat her hand passed through the cat to touch the cushion beneath. Shortly thereafter she woke up and went out into the hall, there on the chair was a cat that looked like it had been dead for weeks. It had not been there when she went to bed.

In my Spycraft 1887 game one of the characters followed a minor bad guy into a disused area of the London underground, staying well behind. In the darkness both the NPC and the characters suddenly saw hundred of gleaming red eys peering out of the darkness. As the PC watched in horror a horde of what appeared to be small children poured out of the tunnel, surrounding the NPC and slicing him with small, rusty knives, eating the pieces that they had sliced off using their bare hands and sharp, pointed teeth. The PC never saw how the encounter ended, since he turned and ran out of the darkness, convinced that the 'children' were following close behind.

The Auld Grump